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Duhre gang: Who are they?

January 17, 2012. Longtime gangster Sandip (Dip) Duhre is killed with several shots in the face while seated at a corner table in a posh restaurant in Vancouver's downtown Sheraton Wall Centre. The Tuesday evening gunfire shocks a room full of well-heeled diners.

Photograph by: Province
, Files

Allies: The Dhak group, select members of United Nations gang.

Enemies: Red Scorpions, some Independent Soldiers and the Hells Angels.

The three Duhre brothers are now two after Sandip’s public execution at the Sheraton Wall Centre’s posh Café One in January 2012.

Sandip (Dip) Singh Duhre, dead at 36, left the control of 50 to 100 street soldiers and much of the Fraser Valley’s drug trade to his brothers Balraj, 38, and Paul, 35.

The Duhres grew up in North Vancouver reportedly under the tutelage of Persian Pride gang members, and were understudies of slain Indo-Canadian gangster Bindy Johal in the 1990’s.

They would later relocate to Surrey, where in 1997 police swooped in on the Duhre family home and arrested all three brothers for obstruction of justice, as well as Johal.

Johal would be shot in the head on the dance floor of Vancouver’s Palladium nightclub one year later on December 20, 1998.

In his youth, Sandip was said to have been a joker who liked to have fun. Bigger brother Balraj was the brawn while very little is known about Paul.

Balraj would be the first Duhre to have an attempt on his life after surviving a bullet wound to the face in a failed 2003 Surrey hit, as well as escaping wounded from a targeted shooting in an East Vancouver Vietnamese restaurant in July 2005.

In May 2005, an attempted hit of Sandip at a Surrey convenience store took the life of his Egyptian-born friend, Dean Mohamed Elshamy.

Sandip and Balraj would escape another targeted hit three months later after the bulletproof BMW they were riding in was shot up in East Vancouver.

In January 2009, Sandip was the target of yet another foiled murder-for-hire plot meant to have taken place outside his Surrey home. Marked for death, he reportedly left the province later in 2009 before returning to the Lower Mainland to fill the power vacuum left by the 2010 arrests of rival leaders from the United Nations and Red Scorpions gangs.

Police said the Duhres were trying to spread across Metro Vancouver in 2010 with their allies, the Dhak group – another Indo-Canadian gang.

Some of the same muscle and drug enforcers who worked for the now-beleaguered Bacon brothers and UN gang currently work for the Duhres — who the Abbotsford police identified in late 2010 as running the city’s drug trade.

The Duhres have also expanded their empire to Smithers in northern B.C. in 2010.

The Duhres are suspected of involvement in the August 2011 Kelowna casino shooting that killed Abbotsford’s Jonathan Bacon and wounded full-patch Hells Angel Larry Amero and James Riach of the Independent Soldiers gang.

It has been reported that Sandip was a one-time ally and mentor of the Bacon brothers.

In September 2011, the Gang Task Force issued a public warning regarding the Duhres and Dhaks, saying anyone associated with them is subject to retaliation.

A number of drug arrests in Abbotsford in 2010 and 2011 involved persons believed to be associated to the Duhre group.

The Duhre’s have largely avoided significant charges and incarceration. Sandip has been convicted of uttering threats and possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose.

Balraj was sentenced to 60 days in jail for escaping lawful custody in 1995, and in June of 1997 was charged with assault and served five months.

For the Duhre’s, Sandip’s murder was the culmination of a tit-for-tat series of hits that has yet to cease.

His execution came less than a week after well-known Vancouver gangster Ranjit Singh Cheema was released from a California prison after a drug trafficking conviction.

Cheema was shot dead in front of his parents South Slope home in May, 2012. He was one of the last living original gangsters from the Bindy Johal era, and his funeral was attended by several hundred mourners.

January 17, 2012. Longtime gangster Sandip (Dip) Duhre is killed with several shots in the face while seated at a corner table in a posh restaurant in Vancouver's downtown Sheraton Wall Centre. The Tuesday evening gunfire shocks a room full of well-heeled diners.

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